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Blowing the lid off yet another scandal involving members of the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government, the arrest of Railway Minister Pawan Kumar Bansal's nephew, Vijay Singla, and a senior railway official, Mahesh Kumar, today took political circles by storm.
Even as Bansal offered to resign late afternoon and the Congress' core group, headed by Sonia Gandhi, met to discuss the issue, the Opposition Bharatiya Janata Party attacked UPA, calling it a "government of middlemen".
The latest controversy has come at a time when the government is still struggling to tide over the recent furore around Law Minister Ashwani Kumar's alleged interference with CBI's status report in the coal block allocation scam. (OFF-TRACK WAYS)
CBI arrested Singla yesterday from a Chandigarh shopping mall, where he had gone to collect Rs 90 lakh as part of the Rs 10-crore bribe he had demanded from Mahesh Kumar to unlawfully secure for him the post of member (electrical), Railway Board. On the other hand, Kumar, who had been appointed on Thursday, was arrested from Mumbai.
Singla was produced before the Patiala House court today, besides three others, and remanded to four days' custody.
In a statement issued today, Bansal denied any "business relationship between his family and that of Singlas". Vijay Singla is his sister's son.
The railway minister, who took charge last December after the Trinamool Congress exited the UPA government, said: "I have always observed highest standards of probity in public life and look forward to an expeditious investigation by CBI in the matter... I had no knowledge or clue about the matter at all," he said.
Bansal had in the morning issued a statement distancing himself from his nephew, who was admittedly a "close relative" but there was "no business relations" between the two families.
